When Danish practice CEBRA took on the brief to create a new home for the Experimentarium science centre in Copenhagen, it created some ‘gunpowder’ moments, including a double helix staircase clad in 10 tonnes of copper

Jean Nouvel’s Louvre Abu Dhabi is the first building in a proposed new cultural quarter for the city, on land reclaimed from the sea. The building draws on traditional Arab architectural patterns, lighting and forms, but delivers an ambitious programme using 21st-century technologies, materials and sophistication

On Cape Town’s Waterfront in 2005 Thomas Heatherwick was introduced to two redundant grain silo buildings. Now Heatherwick Studio has transformed the structures into a unique public art gallery — the largest dedicated to contemporary African art, with an awe-inspiring cathedral-like atrium

The initial design by Jamie Fobert Architects for a much-needed extension to Tate St Ives was abandoned after fierce local objection — but the practice was able to address the site again, this time coming up with a design that artfully embeds the extension in the cliff face

In the quiet of the Suffolk countryside a family home has been carved from the footprint of a farmstead and a Second World War hangar site. It has also inspired London-based Studio RHE to develop a new way to address the national housing shortage